The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Now that Acura has agreed to buy back our (leased) ZDX Type S, we are in our last few weeks of driving it. so I thought it would be good to put down my thought about all aspects of our year-plus of driving this paradoxical beast. Let me tart with the elephant in the room: the reason they are taking it back.

The overriding issue is one that must be a combination of hardware and software, to wit: At startup time, the car performs a self-diagnostic, and if it discovers a problem with any of several basic systems, it disables Advanced Cruise Control, Hands-Free Cruise, and One Pedal Driving, with the accompanying message “Service Brake Assist.” This is directly tied to rain, or at least high humidity. It doesn’t happen every time it rains, but most of the time, and has never happened when it’s dry. The car has been in for service for this problem nine times, in two different states (not surprisingly, it acts up more frequently up in Washington than it does in central California). Acura has replaced the Brake Booster Module, a front-facing camera, and was finally talked into performing the Vehicle-Wide Programming. The first of those actually seemed to work for six months, but the problem originally came back; the other two didn’t even fix it for a week.

Obviously, not every ZDX is having this particular problem, but equally obviously, Acura has no idea what is causing it. Local dealers defer to Acura corporate, and I suspect Acura corporate is passing the buck to GM. Although the Brembo brakes are Acura, I suspect the overall braking system, and the entire sensor suite, is GM. I have never trusted GM engineering, and was only willing to take on this car via a lease in the first place because of that; I now feel completely vindicated in that distrust. My hope was that after four generations of producing EVs, they should have the basic bugs worked out, but I guess not. Under no circumstances would I have been willing to accept a new ZDX as a replacement, even if Acura still had one to offer. Neither would I consider a Prologue instead, since it is based on the same architecture. And since the RSX won’t be out for something like another year, I’m forced to look elsewhere for a replacement EV. (The forthcoming Honda EVs are just grotesque looking, and I wouldn’t be caught dead in one, let alone buy one.) I’m not sure what Honda/Acura’s game plan is here; more than any other car dealer, they are dragging their feet on EVs. But after having driven an EV for a year now, I never want to go back.

I will follow up with my thoughts about other aspects of the ZDX, good, bad, or indifferent.

 

So what DID I like about the ZDX? Most obviously, the power. It is by far the most powerful car I have ever owned. I think the best word to describe the acceleration is effortless. I know that a number of reviews criticized it because, for all its 499 HP, it didn’t just throw you back in your seat every time you touched the pedal, but frankly, nothing could have been farther from what I wanted. Instead, it ramped up quickly, and within a few seconds you were moving faster than seemed possible. In fact, a lot of time I had to make sure NOT to accelerate too fast. I was never tempted to test it’s 0-60 performance, or its top speed. The fastest I’ve ever driven myself was about 120, done in my beloved Integra GS-R while crossing Nevada one time. It was exhilarating and terrifying in equal measure, and I have never been tempted to repeat the experience.

I do most of my driving in suburban Sacramento, a mix of surface streets and moderately busy freeways, along with increasingly frequent road trips north to Washington. As such, the car is perfect for getting up to freeway speed, slipping into a faster lane, or passing somebody. I also love the fact that it is so QUIET while doing so. It’s amazing to cruise along in almost complete silence, or hearing the sound system really clearly, although of course some rougher road surfaces still made that difficult.

In all honesty, though, the car has far more power than I ever needed, and I suspect more than most people really need. Several times while my Type S was in the shop, my local dealer gave me an A-Spec as a loaner. That one, frankly, had plenty of power as well, although noticeably less. Just a little more pedal effort was all it took. Interestingly, though, the A-Spec was not as quiet; there was a noticeable whine from the motor which was completely absent in the Type S. My guess is that the single A-spec motor was pushed harder to achieve the same result, while the dual motors in the Type S were each working much less hard. I should note, however, that I did not hear a similar whine in the RWD Kia EV6.

Along with the raw power of the Type S, I quickly fell in love with one pedal driving. Before I tried it I was more than skeptical, but in a short space of time wound up using it at the highest setting. More than one review praised Acura for getting this feature just right, and I can believe it. The whole things was just intuitive, and frankly I could never tell whether the car was using regenerative braking or applying the real brakes, the transition was just seamless. I should note, by the way, that whenever my car glitched and one-pedal driving was unavailable, I found that the manual brakes were very grabby and jerky when coming to a stop; there’s obviously some computer magic happening there that is really missed when it’s disabled.

Where I appreciated the feature most, though, was in stop and go traffic. I can’t say that the experience was actually pleasurable in the ZDX, but it was the least annoying I’ve ever experienced, without the need to be constantly moving my foot back and forth between the brake and accelerator. Not to mention a clutch, as in my beloved GS-R, which was the last manual tranny I’ve owned. During the time I owned it I was commuting in rush hour traffic twice a day, and started getting cramps in my left leg from holding the clutch down while paused. In other places it was a dream to drive, but I would never drive a stick for commuting again (not a problem, since I am now retired).

 

Really appreciate you taking time to reflect the ownership and share your thoughts. Remember, the press/YouTubers are spoiled, they drive too many cars, and can live in their own illusions. Most of them end up wanting Porsche at Acura price anyway.

Oh and A-spec motor has a different gearing ratio - I think shorter. They would explain the louder motor noise in A-spec.

 

Hands-Free Cruise is another feature that I really liked, but wit HEAVY reservations. I approached using it very cautiously, only trying it for the first time over a month after we’d got the car, on a straight stretch of freeway with little traffic. Over time I grew more comfortable with it, but still feel that it is not smart to use in many circumstances, and it should never be trusted completely.

My favorite use case is on road trips. The 700-mile up I-5 from Sacramento to Puget Sound has many long, straight stretches where I feel quite comfortable letting the car do most of the driving, and I genuinely feel less tired and stressed at the end. However, as the road gets less straight, the feature becomes less capable. It can handle gradual curves with no problem, but tighter turns result in a zig-zag motion, where the car keeps overcorrecting in opposite directions until the curve straightens out. If you keep a tight grip on the wheel you can smooth this out, but you shouldn’t need to. After the VWP update this seemed to work better most of the time, but when it couldn’t handle a curve it REALLY couldn’t handle it, and went veering to one side or the other. Basically safer not to use at all under those road conditions in any case.

As far as automatically changing lanes goes, it can make lane changes quite easily and safely, but frankly it tries to do so far too frequently. My guess is that it is only looking about 100 yards ahead, so it will cheerfully change lanes to get behind a slower car that will require passing again in a minute or less. And it REALLY doesn’t want to stay in the fast lane. Obviously, there are some states where you’re only supposed to use the left lane for passing, but California isn’t one of them. Also, it is more than courtesy to move over any time someone comes up behind you. But I’ve also had the car move over, and then immediately move back because it was now behind a slower car.

While I’ve been enjoying the feature judiciously, I also wasn’t looking forward to the privilege of paying for it after three years. GM seems to be aggressively pursuing car ownership as a service (such as planning on discontinuing carplay so they can charge you for poorer quality service and access to all your data), and I’m sorry to see Honda/Acura buying into this to any degree

 

More on Hands-Free Cruise. It turns out that I have a habit of, while driving with a car mug, using one hand on the wheel and with the other holding the mug just below my mouth,. Unfortunately, this blocks the view of my face by the sensor above the steering wheel, so the green light on the top of the wheel starts to flash, and I have to quickly put the mug down again. Since I have one hand firmly on the wheel, it seems to me that the sensor is overly sensitive about whether I’m paying attention, and causes an issue when there wasn’t one.

More of an issue is that, AT ANY TIME, the car can lose track of the lines on the road, and turn hands-free cruise off altogether. This is, however, working as designed, and is why the feature is not called “full self-driving” or some other fiction. As someone who worked in the computer field, I have lots of experience with what can happen when a computer gets confused or moves beyond its designed parameters. Even with lots more sensors than a. current Tesla has, anyone using this feature really must be able to take control instantly. For a while I experimented with being truly hands-free, but after a while went back to having at least one hand always touching the wheel, if not outright gripping it loosely, for safety.

 

Car Seats. The ZDX Type S has some of the most comfortable seats I have ever experienced (admittedly with a limited scope). Frankly, they are the main reason we went with the Type S, or even with the Prologue. My wife has various physical issues that make it hard to find a comfortable seat, and it turns out that she was never comfortable in my old 2005 Accord Hybrid. So I was determined to find something to make her really comfortable. That being said, I easily noticed the difference myself. I was perfectly comfortable driving the Accord around town, but after one of our road trips I would have a sore butt for a day or two. In the ZDX this is just not an issue.

 

Sound System. On the one hand, I really, really appreciate a good sound system. On the other hand, I am in my late 60s and experiencing some hearing loss. So I certainly not going to claim that I have “golden ears”, but I certainly can tell the difference between a premium sound system and a basic one. The ZDX easily passes this test, and I have been ALMOST completely happy with it. I say almost, because I think Acura missed several opportunities here.

Most important, with the large number of speakers and their spread of locations, I really wanted it to be able to handle Dolby Atmos. Since at least Apple Music is now streaming many Atmos tracks, this would be a way to really set a car above the rest of the herd. My understanding is that there are a few high-end cars that do have Atmos already, but I am sure that there are hefty licensing fees involved, and possibly a more powerful audio processor would be required. Failing that, though, the car also does not recognize any lossless audio format through its USB ports. I found a footnote on the Acura website that listed what formats it would recognize, and FLAC and ALAC were not on the list, let alone DSD.

The only way for me to get lossless music, at only CD quality, was through Apple Music, either via streaming, or pulled from my iPhone storage (I have about 1500 CDs ripped to ALAC and then synched to the phone, which takes up more than half a terabyte). Streaming was pretty good, but on those road trips I experienced frequent dropouts. Pulled from my phone’s local library this doesn’t happen. At any rate, with its premium sound system, I think the ZDX should be capable of much more.

 

Nice writeup on your thoughts and experiences!!!

THANX!!!

 

Controls. Very much a mixed bag. A lot of reviews dinged the ZDX here, and I half agree, but mostly for different reasons. Almost everybody criticized the placement of the button for the rear hatch, under the driver’s door armrest. For the life of me, I can’t see why. The is certainly less awkward than the traditional trunk release lever on the floorboards, and once you figure out where it is, it just works. Mostly the same thing with the parking brake, at the bottom of the dash near the door. I agree that it would make more sense on the center console, but they set it off with a metal surface, so it’s easy to see or to feel with your hand. Again, once you’ve found it, it just works. The buttons next to it, on the other hand, can really only be used when the car isn’t moving, which is bad design.

I also really hate the automation that they put behind the parking brake. If you park on a slope, the car automatically sets the parking brake — most of the time. And it decides how much of a slope qualifies. So sometimes it sets it when I don’t think it will, so I wind up turning it right back off, and then have to wait several seconds before it will allow me to set it again. The same is true in reverse; sometimes it turns it off automatically, and some times it doesn’t. Bottom line, I always have to pause and visually verify whether the brake light is set in the instrument panel, which completely defeats the purpose of setting it automatically. It should either always be set automatically, or never. The current solution just doesn’t work.

I also hate the controls for the moon roof and cover. They appear to be modeled after the door window controls, which push down to open and pull up to close. This echoes the direction that the windows themselves move, so it is intuitively obvious. The room controls have similar motions, albeit upside down. Unfortunately, neither direction corresponds with the directions that the roof and shade actually move, which are forward and back. In every previous Honda or Acura I’ve ever owned with a moon roof, the controls pushed forward and back as well, which was again intuitively obvious. In the ZDX, after a year of ownership, I can’t remember whether up or down on the buttons means open or close, and I get it wrong almost every time. Terrible design.

And speaking of terrible design, the headlight controls. I have no words to describe how much I hate this. Cars have had headlight stalks for longer than I’ve been alive, and everybody understands how they work. So of course GM (( am 100% sure this was a GM design decision) puts a light bulb icon on the touch screen, which when pushed changes to a row of tiny dots which only stay on screen for a couple of seconds. A headlight stalk can be used by touch; the ZDX control requires that you take your eyes off the road to use. I suspect that the designers believed that the control would be rarely used, because the car has automatic headlights. Um, no. There are many, many circumstances in which I like to use headlights even when not strictly required. Also, in California, by law you mush turn on your headlights when you use your windshield wipers, which was NOT happening originally. This MAY have been fixed, or at least improved, by the VWP, because the lights now seem to be coming on automatically more frequently when it rains, but I’m not really sure.

And the flip side of turning the lights to On manually is that you have to remember to turn them back off manually before you turn off the car, which I have forgotten approximately 99% of the time, meaning that I have to turn the car back on, go through the “find the right dot” exercise on the touchscreen, and then turn the car off again. Also, numerous times after I have turned the lights on manually, I have gotten a pop-up menu saying that the car has now switched them back to Auto — without asking. And then half the time when I turn off the car I still get the notice that the lights are still On.

I also have major criticisms of they automatic sensing windshield wipers. I can’t count how many times it has flaked out completely, either not turning on when it was raining steadily, or being on steady when at most intermittent was called for. Also, if there is standing water on the windshield when you start the car up, but it is not currently raining, the car won’t clear the water. Beyond all this, however, I see a lot of hubris behind the programming here. I tend to be a little OCD, and frequently fiddle with my windshield wipers in any car. Basically, my brain is trying to decide whether having rain build up on the windshield or a faster wiper speed is more annoying. If the car let me indicate my preferences here it might work, but mostly I feel that it just gets the correct setting wrong — when it’s even working as designed, which as I noted it frequently isn’t.

The car has similar issues with the climate controls. It tries to guess whether to turn on the heat or AC, heated or cooled seats, and steering wheel heater, and frequently gets it wrong. It I’m getting in and out of the car, and it’s already warmed up, it insists on turning on the seat and steering wheel heaters every time. Or I’ve had the temperature set 10 degrees above the outside temp, and it decides to switch to AC.

Related to the controls is how the car handles alerts when both keys are in the car. Specifically, it beeps when it perceives that you have left your key in the car, which is reasonable enough. However, if I get out of the car before my wife (which is most of the time), it honks because HER key is still in the car, even though she wasn’t driving. Is it too much to ask for the car to figure out that the DRIVER hasn’t left his key in the car? And the alert is three short honks of the horn, which is incredibly annoying.

The steering wheel controls are also a hot mess. The cruise control settings certainly work, and in a manner consistent with other Hondas and Acuras, but they are on the opposite side of the wheel, so when I’m switching between cars I’m frequently hitting the wrong controls. I also really dislike putting the audio controls on the BACK of the steering wheel, and splitting then between the two sides. Again, they work, but they’re in the wrong locations, so my hands are constantly hitting the audio controls instead of cruise control, and vice versa. I do appreciate that there are physical buttons for the climate controls, but the text and icons are extremely small, and it took me a long time to figure out what they all did.

The bottom line is that the design of many of the controls is criminally negligent, and the car’s automation is inconsistent at best, and a complete failure at worst.

 

The failure of the automatic headlights to turn on, when the windshield wipers are on is perplexing.